Well well well: if it isn’t a solo project from B&S mainstay, Stevie “Reverb” Jackson. Physical copies of (I Can’t Get No) are due out on 24th October, but the download is available now. And you can listen to these EXAMPLES via that soundcloud thing (no I’ve never heard of it either).
Skye’s instaverdict: ‘Man of God’ is kind of awesome lushness, ‘Try Me’ is… a bit bobbins. Sorry, Stevie.
The whole project’s been put together with B&S bandmates, as well as OTHER SCOTTISH PEOPLE. Bits of The New Pornos were involved too.
Click through for a tracklisting and some tour dates!
They didn’t see it coming, and maybe they didn’t anticpate the disco beats either. In a word: charming
The video (animated by Lesley Barnes) is one of two which accompany the final single from B&S’s latest LP. Click through for the video for “Come on Sister”.
March 3rd: OSAKA, Namba Hatch
March 4th: TOKYO, Studio Coast
March 7th: BRISBANE, The Tivoli
March 10th: SYDNEY, Sydney Opera House
March 12th: MELBOURNE, The Forum
March 13th: MEREDITH, Golden Plains Festival
March 14th: MELBOURNE, The Forum
March 16th: ADELAIDE, Her Majesty’s Theatre
March 18th: PERTH, Astor Theatre
April 1st: COPENHAGEN, Falconer
April 2nd: OSLO, Sentrum Center
April 3rd: STOCKHOLM, Circus
April 5th: HAMBURG, Grosse Freiheit
April 6th: BERLIN, Huxleys
April 8th: KOLN, Ewerk
April 9th: ROTTERDAM, Playhouse @ Motel Mozaique
April 10th: BRUSSELS, AB
April 11th: PARIS, Grand Rex
April 13th: ZURICH, Xtra Limmathaus
April 14th: MILAN, Alcatraz
April 15th: MUNICH, Muffathalle
April 16th: VIENNA, Gasometer
April 19th: WARSAW, Stodola
May 26th: BARCELONA, Primavera Sound
June 2nd: LEICESTER, De Montfort Hall
NPR have a short interview with Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian in which he SLAMS the lack of decent tacos in the Second City of Empire. Well, “slams” in that nice, polite Belle & Sebastian manner of his.
“I have some ideas that I might have to act upon. One of them is to open a taqueria in Glasgow. There’s no decent Mexican food in Glasgow. And I’ve had this idea for a while, to open a Belle & Sebastian taqueria. You’re laughing, but I’m about to get serious about this. Because this could be the thing that allows me to carry on doing music — to serve a decent taco.”
I have no idea about Glasgow but I was always partial to Viva Mexico on Cockburn Street in Edinburgh. I also quite like the notion of some kind of Dear Catastrophe Waitress-esque place where they serve Lazy Lime Painter Jane based drinks and Chickenfactor Enchiladas. Yum!
More B&S: Matador have announced a competition for which they are making the (quite possibly justifiable) claim that it is the coolest thing ever.
Inside every copy of Belle and Sebastian’s new album Write About Love is a unique code which you will enter here and then write 300 words about love, in any sense of the word. Why you love. Who you love. What you love. Where you love. Anything. Just write about love.
Then Belle and Sebastian will pick a winner (henceforth referred to as “Lucky”) and Stuart Murdoch will fly out to Lucky’s hometown, hang out with Lucky for an afternoon, and write and record a song about Lucky which will then be released on an exclusive Belle and Sebastian 7″ later in 2011.
I met Stuart once. I was drunk and I told him I loved him. He said: “Of course you don’t”. But he said it in such a lovely way, I just ended up loving him even more.
In further pursuit of my goal of turning TMS into a Belle & Sebastian fansite, here’s the INTERNET VIDEO PROGRAMME that the band have been streaming on their home page for the last wee whiley. NOW WITH ADDED iPHONE DOWNLOADABILITY! I might give that a shot to see if I can get it on my iPod Classic.
Despite it’s online free-ness, I’m a little disappointed that this isn’t going to be appearing as a DVD bonus (like the DVD edition of The Life Pursuit). I love me some DVD bonus guff.
It’s a charming thing with some music, interviews and a bunch of shots of Glesgae looking improbably sunny. And a slightly poseurish opening statement about “what music can give us”. Never change, Belle & Sebastian!
After I was given a cassette copy of If You’re Feeling Sinister in 1996 by a workmate in the supermarket where I stacked shelves, I became a confirmed and committed fan of Belle & Sebastian. This was not an especially unimaginable occurrance: certainly in an environment which seemed to echo some of their great early songs (unfulfilling work in retail: check; frustrated love life; check: marginal existence somewhere in the arse end of Scotland: check; literary pretensions: check; propensity for making lists using unnecessarily complicated punctuation: check). Being a fan of the group also satisfied the collector that lurks inside every indie fanboy: 3rd LP The Boy with the Arab Strap was presaged by a CD release of the hitherto impossible to find Tigermilk, and there were the EPs to collect (and once you had those, you could even buy a cardboard slipcase for your copies!).
You wait months for a TMS post about Belle and Sebastian and then two come along in one day. You’d think they had an album to promote or summat!
Anyway, consider this a teeny addendum to our previous post (that nonetheless deserves its own. Errrr) because those fine people at BIG ASS LENS have a super video of B&S at Williamsburg Waterfront in which the band perform “Me & The Major” and my personal favourite Belles song of all time “Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying”.
There’s more footage to come from this show, so keep your peepers focussed on the Big Ass Lens website.
The Graun has a great interview with Belle & Sebastian about forthcoming LP …Write About Love today. Obviously this is going to be one of THE MOST ANTICIPATED RECORDS of 2010. I mean, I am anticipating like a bastard over it, and believe you me, that’s a hell of a lot of anticipating.
“And it sort of worked in a way because it absolutely got what we wanted on the song – this nervy guy, and the girl [Norah Jones] knows exactly what she wants. And obviously she’s Miss Million Pounds, she’s duetted with fucking everybody.”
“Yes,” says Geddes. “She’s got a whole album of duets to prove it. You’re just another fucking notch on her duet post.”
